Paper 2024/1170

Rudraksh: A compact and lightweight post-quantum key-encapsulation mechanism

Suparna Kundu, COSIC, KU Leuven, Belgium
Archisman Ghosh, Purdue University, USA
Angshuman Karmakar, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, India
Shreyas Sen, Purdue University, USA
Ingrid Verbauwhede, COSIC, KU Leuven, Belgium
Abstract

Resource-constrained devices such as wireless sensors and Internet of Things (IoT) devices have become ubiquitous in our digital ecosystem. These devices generate and handle a major part of our digital data. However, due to the impending threat of quantum computers on our existing public-key cryptographic schemes and the limited resources available on IoT devices, it is important to design lightweight post-quantum cryptographic (PQC) schemes suitable for these devices. In this work, we explored the design space of learning with error-based PQC schemes to design a lightweight key-encapsulation mechanism (KEM) suitable for resource-constrained devices. We have done a scrupulous and extensive analysis and evaluation of different design elements, such as polynomial size, field modulus structure, reduction algorithm, {and} secret and error distribution of an LWE-based KEM. Our explorations led to the proposal of a lightweight PQC-KEM, Rudraksh, without compromising security. Our scheme provides security against chosen ciphertext attacks (CCA) with more than 100 bits of Core-SVP post-quantum security and belongs to the NIST-level-I security category (provide security at least as much as AES-128). We have also shown how ASCON can be used for lightweight pseudo-random number generation and hash function in the lattice-based KEMs instead of the widely used Keccak for lightweight design. Our FPGA results show that Rudraksh currently requires the least area among the PQC KEMs of similar security. Our implementation of Rudraksh provides a improvement in terms of the area requirement compared to the state-of-the-art area-optimized implementation of Kyber, can operate at - higher frequency with respect to high-throughput Kyber, and improves time-area-product compared to the state-of-the-art compact implementation of Kyber published in HPEC 2022.

Metadata
Available format(s)
PDF
Category
Public-key cryptography
Publication info
Published by the IACR in TCHES 2025
Keywords
Post-quantum cryptographyKey-encapsulation mechanismLattice-based cryptographyHardware implementationFPGA.
Contact author(s)
suparna kundu @ esat kuleuven be
ghosh69 @ purdue edu
angshuman @ cse iitk ac in
shreyas @ purdue edu
ingrid verbauwhede @ esat kuleuven be
History
2025-01-23: last of 2 revisions
2024-07-19: received
See all versions
Short URL
https://ia.cr/2024/1170
License
Creative Commons Attribution
CC BY

BibTeX

@misc{cryptoeprint:2024/1170,
      author = {Suparna Kundu and Archisman Ghosh and Angshuman Karmakar and Shreyas Sen and Ingrid Verbauwhede},
      title = {Rudraksh: A compact and lightweight post-quantum key-encapsulation mechanism},
      howpublished = {Cryptology {ePrint} Archive, Paper 2024/1170},
      year = {2024},
      url = {https://eprint.iacr.org/2024/1170}
}
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